admin
PARIS. — He had checked off the date of this meeting. In June, 15 days after the end of his third season in the French Ligue 1 football, at the Stade de Reims, Marshall Munetsi had an appointment at Mabvuku High School, a high school in the east of Harare, where his athletic qualities were noticed.
There he found teachers “who work tirelessly”. Among them, his mentor. And especially students who owe him a lot. In a country where the average monthly salary is slightly more than US$200, the footballer has chosen to support education: he pays the school fees of 60 children aged 14 and 15, girls and boys. Many are orphans.
“I also provide equipment and balloons,” adds the generous young man.
Munetsi (26) created a foundation in 2019. Like the Senegalese Sadio Mané, who inspired him. He receives advice from Wasserman, the American agency which directs his career, but takes care of it alone.
Changing a person’s life doesn’t require that much money. All the same: he devotes 5 to 10% of his salary to helping his compatriots forgotten by fate. Sometimes up to 30%, “it depends on the needs”.
He prefers to keep for himself the amount that appears at the bottom of his payslip but specifies that on his last visit he had bought food and winter clothing “for e10 000”.
The bill will increase if he goes after his next idea: building houses. Put a roof over the heads of these children to keep them away from drugs.
“A lot of boys dive and suffer from memory loss,” he observed.
In his family, bereaved by the death of his sister Patience, infected with AIDS following a rape at the age of 8, helping others is “a priority”.
While the father, a policeman, was only paid e100 a month, a “decent” salary according to Marshall, who measured the gap when he left South Africa, where he played between 2015 and 2019. In Champagne, the first payment received had “shocked” him .
He’s saving money for his afterlife. Having fun, for him, is “a restaurant with the family or with (his) girlfriend”. Not much else. “In football, you have to wear a watch and luxury clothes, drive a big car. But material things don’t interest me.”
He drives a leased vehicle and says he is “unable” to shop at Gucci, a marker of a certain success among professional athletes. Some have dared to mock him, he thinks only of the unfortunate “who go to bed on an empty stomach”.
In the Reims locker room, the discrepancy gave rise to dialogues of the deaf because “many teammates do not understand” . Without playing the lesson giver, he simply compares: “A young European thinks of taking advantage of his money. Not in Zimbabwe, because families don’t help.”
So he was surprised when, last year, Serbian goalkeeper Predrag Rajkovic brought him boxes of business to give away, the day after a conversation.
The midfielder, renowned for his endurance, would like us to welcome with kindness the refugees who risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean.
“They are obliged to do so for lack of assistance,” he insists. ”In Europe, there are more opportunities to work, so we cannot judge.”
At his old school, he encourages children to take an interest in public affairs .
He has another reason to kick himself: since February, the Zimbabwean football federation, ZIFA, has been suspended by FIFA because of ”third party interference”.
As such, the Warriors of Tino Kadewere (Lyon) and Munetsi were excluded from the qualifiers for the 2023 African Cup of Nations. — Le Journal du Dimanche.
Online Reporter